THORNTON ABBEY

An Augustinian house founded as a priory in 1139 by William Le Gros and raised to an abbey in 1148. After its suppression in 1539, Henry VIII refounded it as a college of secular priests and a school for 14 boys, re-using the monastic buildings. This college was supressed by Edward VI in 1547 and demolished by Sir Vincent Skinner in the years after 1602. In the north-west corner of the precinct, Skinner built a stately new house, which collapsed, reportedly, in about 1611 (record 1501692). The abbey's gatehouse (80449), built 1377-82, still stands, its floors and roof replaced in the 1830s. Wing walls added by 1389 survive in part. Revealed by excavations in the 1830s and 1950s, the earliest remains, the vaulted undercroft of the east cloister range, date to the early 13th century: a range of small rooms, one interpreted as a warming house. North of the undercroft are the remains of the late 13th century parlour. The partially standing chapter house dates to between 1282 and 1308. The north cloister range abutted the abbey church. The foundations indicate a late 13th century building with early 14th century alterations. The west and south cloister ranges were begun in 1322-3. Other remains from this phase include undercrofts used for storage, lay-brothers' accommodation, the monks' frater and the lodgings of the earlier abbots. The 30ha (75 acre) precinct is enclosed on the west by a moat; the Skitter Beck on the east may have been dammed to create a large pond on this side. Other moats sub-divide the interior. A discrete set of fishponds lies outside the precinct to the south (record 1501700). Documents, including a Chronicle compiled in about 1533, also points to the existence of barns, granaries, brewhouse, bakehouse, windmill and tidemill, guesthouse and almonry. Many of these structures survive as earthworks and buried remains; the site has been subject to various forms of survey. The gatehouse and claustral buildings are in Guardianship.

TA 1172 1899. Thornton Abbey Augustinian monastery: gatehouse,precinct, medieval road and bridge, moat, fishponds, post-Dissolution college and school, and house. Scheduled RSM No 13377.A single area contains the late 14th century gatehouse and barbican of the Augustinian monastery (see TA 11 NW 14), an outer precinct surrounded by a moat and containing the earthwork remains of a wide variety of ancillary features and buildings, the walled inner precinct containing the foundations of the abbey church and other cloister buildings and the buried remains of additional structures, the site of the medieval road that predated the abbey, the remains of the 14th century bridge that underlie modern College Bridge, and a large number of monastic fishponds (see 1501700). In addition, after the Dissolution, Henry VIII refounded the abbey as a college of secular priests and a school for 14 boys, re-using buildings of the former monastery. This college was suppressed by Edward VI in 1547 and demolished by Sir Vincent Skinner in 1610. Out of the remains, Skinner built a stately house which subsequently collapsed. The site of this house is preserved within the inner precinct (see 1501692).

The moat is at its widest in front of the gatehouse, where it is circa 20m wide and still partially water-filled. It extends for circa 300m N and S then turns E for circa 400m to meet East Halton Beck, enclosing a precinct of circa 29 hectares. The moat feeds at least 2 groups of fishponds, one to the NE of the church and one outside the SE corner, the latter consisting of a small detached pool adjacent to a group of three small pools and one larger, surrounded by moat. An arm of the main moat which crosses the precinct N of the gatehouse may also have served as a fishpond, as may a similar ditch crossing S of the cloister (see 1501700). A number of other ditches crossing the precinct are part of the monastery's water-management system.

An extensive survey of the earthworks within both the inner and outer precincts reveals the remains of a range of ancillary buildings that will equate to the documentary evidence for the existence of barns, granaries, a brewhouse and bakehouse, an extensive guesthouse and possibly also a mill. It is also clear that the home grange lay in the N of the Scheduled area. The cloister was revealed in foundation plan through excavations in the 1830s by Charles, first Earl of Yarborough; it is of typical layout. His excavation did not, however, continue beyond the level of the latest remains and the layout of the first cloister and church is still unclear. The earliest visible remains are of the vaulted undercroft of the E cloister range, dating to the early 13th century and indicating a range of small rooms, one of which has been interpreted as a warming house. These stood beneath the first floor dorter. A passage or slype separated the warming house from the rest of the range until it was blocked in the 15th century. N of the undercroft are the late 13th century remains of the vestibule and a narrow room interpreted as the parlour.

The vestibule leads into the chapter house which is still partially standing. This octagonal structure was begun in 1282 and floored in 1308. The surviving walls are decorated with window tracery which is taken to have covered the missing walls also. The remains of the stone seat which lined the walls of the chapter house is visible on either side of the vestibule entrance. The remains of the abbey church suggest a late 13th century building with a S aisle added in the early 14th. A chapel dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury (Becket) was also added at this later date, off the N side of the presbytery, and a Lady Chapel was inserted behind the high altar later in the same century.

The early 14th century alterations to the nave were made at the same time as the building of two new cloister ranges, the W and S, begun in 1322-3. These almost certainly replaced earlier buildings. The 14th century W range consisted of a vaulted undercroft of 7 double bays, used for storage with either the lay-brothers' accomodation or possibly the lodgings of the earlier abbots above. The S range was of roughly identical form, with the refectory or frater above. The remains of other cloister buildings such as the infirmary, kitchens and reredorter have not been revealed by excavation.

A road ran through the area of the monastic precinct prior to the foundation of the abbey, when it was diverted to the N, its present course. Where this diverted road crosses East Halton Beck a bridge was built (College Bridge at TA 1197 1933) and has been rebuilt on the same site down to the present day, so that the current structure incorporates substantial remains of a 14th century bridge.

The monastery was founded as an Augustinian priory dedicated to St Mary in 1139 by William Le Gros, Count of Aumale, and was raised to abbey status in 1148 (as is recorded in the 16th Century 'Thornton Chronicle'). It was colonised by 12 black canons from the Augustinian priory of Kirkham in North Yorkshire and became one of the order's richest houses in the country, such that its' annual income equalled approximately £1543 in 1313. After suppression it was refounded as the College of The Holy Trinity for secular priests by Henry VIII, until it was dissolved by Edward VI in 1547. It then passed to Sir Vincent Skinner in 1602, who demolished buildings to construct a house on the W side of the abbey plot, within the moated precinct. This house is said to have collapsed without visible cause. Skinner then built another house on the site. Trenches NE of the gatehouse, dug when building stone was removed from the site, may indicate the position of one of these houses (see 1501692). The gatehouse and cloister buildings have been in State care since 1938. They and the Barbican, precinct walls, remains of the church and Abbot's Lodge are also Grade I Listed. The coachhouse, ruins of the S precinct gateway, garden and orchard walls and the bridge are Grade II Listed. (4)

An earthwork survey undertaken for English Heritage in 1985 by Caroline Atkins, Denny Coppack and Janet Tulley was interpreted and published by Glyn Coppack, representing the first major attempt to understand the earthwork remains and thus the layout of the precinct as a whole. (11)

Between 2007 and 2010, English Heritage's Archaeological Survey and Investigation Team led a multidisciplinary investigation of Thornton Abbey in North Lincolnshire (12). In addition to a Level 3 analytical field survey at 1:1 000 scale, covering 8.5 hectares between the Skitter Beck and the gatehouse, the project also comprised rapid examination of the remainder of the precinct and its environs, documentary research, rapid architectural investigation of the standing remains, analysis of Lidar imagery and aerial survey to National Mapping Programme standards of what is believed to be the medieval North Bail, covering a further 10ha, where earthworks that survived until the 1950s have subsequently been levelled by ploughing. The findings of geophysical surveys carried out by English Heritage in 1995 were also taken into account.

The new documentary research brought to light previously overlooked information in Thornton's 16th-century Chronicle, as well as producing a more thorough account of the post-monastic use of the site, in part based on documents not previously consulted. The effects of post-medieval activity were also clarified by detailed survey of the complex earthworks lying between the claustral buildings and the surviving outer gatehouse. These include the garden landscaping - apparently partly unfinished - associated with a short-lived stately home, built in about 1607 for Sir Vincent Skinner (see 1501692). There are also various potentially confusing various scars left by 19th- and 20th-century archaeological excavations. Important evidence for the medieval constructional sequence was also identified. The 1995 geophysical survey complemented the results of the earthwork survey and, most significantly, detected a number of monastic buildings and wall-lines not recognisable in the surface remains, including some apparently erased by Skinner's garden works. The architectural analysis of the standing remains of the gatehouse, alongside the collection of a suite of post-medieval depictions of the structure, shed new light on the development of this magnificent and unusual building (see 80449). The aerial photographic transcription of the North Bail, thought to be the site of the home grange, revealed a range of medieval features and led to the re-interpretation of other features identified previously.

A detailed and extensively illustrated report, part of English Heritage's Research Department Report Series, is available from the NMR, reference RDRS 100/2010. (12)

English Heritage conservation statement published 2002. (13)

There is documentary evidence relating to the development of the Abbey in the form of a manuscript chronicle compiled in about 1533 housed in the Bodleian Library collections. (14-15)

SOURCE TEXT

(11) General reference

Coppack, G 1991 'The Precinct of Thornton Abbey, South Humberside' in Tyszka, D et al 'Land, people and Landscapes: Essays on the History of the Lincolnshire Region' Page(s)37-44